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The problem with infatuation

infatuation
n. an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone or something; a foolish, unreasoning or extravagant passion or attraction.

The problem with infatuation is this – it comes quickly like a rushing wind, and from out of nowhere it seizes your entire being so that your normal functions are incapacitated.

The problem is precisely this – infatuation chooses to latch itself onto that one thought, object, activity or person – and it refuses to let go.

In its mildest form, the effects of infatuation are embarrassing. The feelings threaten to overflow, to burst out at the seams at times and it places it should not, like when you are walking on the road in full public view, or if you are just going downstairs to get a drink.

Your subsequent actions, for however long this infatuation lasts, will be unashamedly connected to it. Songs will be chosen because of it, hairs tied a certain way because of it, poems written flow from it. Your functions will be interrupted, your routines inconvenienced, your behaviour becomes outside of your norm. And are any of these even your fault?

Infatuation should be admired for its one-track mind, its ability to stay focussed (obsession is another topic on its own) in our generation of multi-taskers and short attention span. But a one-track mind has its darker sides, the inability to submit is one, also its unwillingness to change course and do a U-turn. It is inflexible, stubborn, hard-headed.

Like a leech, infatuation will only “drop off” when it has fully fed on whatever fantasies and possibilities it so wishes to indulge in. By then, it would be too late. The itch and the scar follows, and the leech must be put to death even though it is your blood that will be on the ground.

You’d expect infatuation to fade away as quickly as it seized you (those who rush into marriage want to rush out quickly, I was told), but alas it does not so much as ebb slowly away, aided by time and a very strong will. Left to its own devices, it draws blood and is a parasite of its worst kind.